Advance on Utgarde
by Obsidian Blade
Summary: One shot. Aelystriel, ex member of the Argent Dawn, submits to her new, disjointed Forsaken mind.


**ADVANCE ON UTGARDE**

by Obsidian Blade

We will take the keep. Certainty is best, so we will take the keep. Speedy, crouched bodies slung low to the ground, we slither and hurry down the slope, down the muddy, slick, treacherous path of old, rotting planks dug deep into the earth: poor purchase, like cracks in ice. We do not fall; we are stealthy as cats, as hunters. We are silent. In my mind's eye we are silent, like rolling shadows surging soundless through the sleet, though rotting ears make out the steely clink of chain against the velvet hiss of winter wetness, of clicking bone and crackling tendon. My rot. My bones and joints laid bare. My senses weak, watery like the air; crack of lightning barely noticed, so short and sharp and easily missed when truth seeps in past the eyeballs like the last stale remnants of a soon-forgotten dream. My mind's eye so sharp it cuts reality as I wish. Whether I wish. Regardless.

We reach the village and surge through the alleyway; his cloak snaps and twists like a threadbare flag, black wings from his shoulders, leather sails slapping the long curved planks of the enemy's wall. His mouth opens and words slip through the slat in the chiselled dome of his helm. S_top. Wait. Watch._ Little point in explaining to him the futility of sight; little point in doing anything but what he says. The sleet pounds down and the liquid in my head swirls like water in a bowl. My back against his side, my neck craning, my dumb eyes peering through the night, I look out at homes and workshops, stood in rows like gravestones, their peaked roofs stretched tall and sharp like the spires of towering cathedrals. Unarmed men and women and children curled up asleep within, perfect to ambush, perfect to kill. Redemption so far off now. Soul held far from the light, caged behind black protruding ribs like prison bars. Blood runs in my mind's eye, seeps through bedsheets from tears in flesh and wells and rolls on dusty wooden floors, through gaps 'tween boards and down to crushed earth. Colour and taste elude me, but my toes tingle in my boots. Blood rippling up against my feet: it gives a hollow, dying howl and grasps weakly at my ankles; it gasps and chokes; it begs. I smile with lifeless lips.

He jerks my elbow, scowls, blue eyes flashing with lightning or anger, hard to be sure, but he doubtless saw my glee and knows just what thought I relish. The drawing down of dark, rain-slicked brows, the tightness in his neck beneath his mail, the disgust in his voice. _For god's sake, come._ He knows and he hates and we run together like ink once again through puddles across the square, around a dead and blackened pyre, over a wooden bridge that shifts the pounding of our feet into the pounding of fists on doors: let us in, our advance must not falter, your gates shall soon fall.

Hiding, now, in a shallow alcove in stone walls, the leering mask of Utgarde rearing high overhead, towers invisible in the darkness past the guttering torchlight from a bracket not far from us. A guard patrols nearby, his hefty vyrkul features turned mask by the black shadows carving out his eyes and sunken cheeks. We do not fear him, though I imagine his harsh breath steaming through cold air right past our very throats. He is so close and yet so blind, too focused to see the foe crouched right under his nose in bright firelight.

The torches move in the distance and the guard cares only for them. The guard's peers care only for them as they charge past us to the thundering bellow of the keep's great horn. Still, silent, splattered with the mud from their massive clunking greaves, not needing to breathe, only to watch and wait and win, we see Ymiron's army pass us by in angry, sleepy single-mindedness. They go to kill our allies. They go to cost the Horde fifty excellent men.

We wait for them, then slip around the corner and through the arched gateway, into the vast, empty hallways beyond. We move, undetected, into the enemy's precious bastion with steel and apathy and hate and gunpowder. We advance upon the king himself and I think of blood and destruction and anything beyond my own rotting self with the bubbling glee of single-minded ignorance. I think of what I can do, of what I will do.

We will take the keep.


End file.
